Tylor Megill Making One Last Push to Keep Rotation Spot

Tylor Megill needed to have a bounceback start Friday. Yes, the team as a whole needed him to pitch better, but on a more individual level, he needed to show why he belonged in the big leagues.

He was coming off of what was probably the second-worst start of his MLB career when he gave up nine runs (seven earned) in 3 2/3 innings in Pittsburgh. Joey Lucchesi recently tossed 6 2/3 innings of scoreless ball in Syracuse, making it his fourth excellent start in his last five, and to top it off, Jose Quintana just made his first rehab appearance in St. Lucie this week, so he’s on the (slow) path back to the bigs. 

If Megill fell flat again on Friday, the Mets easily could have turned to Lucchesi for a couple starts in place of him until Quintana is ready to roll. Instead, Megill turned in his best start since early April, shutting down the Cardinals for six innings with the only blemish being a Willson Contreras solo home run that barely stayed fair.

His final line: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 7 K

The biggest thing of note on that line is his walk total — zero. Megill has struggled with his control all season, with his 12.1% walk rate going into the night ranking in just the 13th percentile in baseball. While he was never elite when it came to preventing the free pass, this season has still been a drastic departure from the 7.1% and 6.5% he posted in 2021 and 2022, respectively. 

It was his first start this season where he did not surrender a walk, and just the third time he gave up just one or fewer. In 13 starts going into Friday Megill had given up three or more walks seven times, including each of his last two. 

While he did not walk a batter, he did hit Dylan Carlson with a pitch in the fifth inning, so it was not a totally clean outing when it comes to free trips to first. It was also at that point it looked like things were going to unravel for Megill as they have so many times this season. He gave up the homer to Contreras to open the inning, which was followed up by a Jordan Walker double and the Carlson HBP, putting runners on first and second with no outs. 

Megill then struck out notorious Mets killer Paul DeJong, got a gift from Walker who got thrown out trying to steal third and then struck out Tommy Edman to leave Carlson stranded at first. He came back out for the sixth inning and worked around a Brendan Donovan leadoff single by setting down Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Gorman and Nolan Arenado in order to get through six — something he has only done two other times this season.

Maybe working out of trouble in the fifth, something he has struggled to do all season, and getting through the heart of the Cardinals order in the sixth is the start of something new for Megill. 

He was quoted in an SNY article by Robert Sanchez following the game saying he made some mechanical adjustments, which offers an explanation for his sudden improvement other than just “feeling great” as he also said.

“We’ve been trying to figure things out mechanically,” Megill said. “My fastball hasn’t been good lately, obviously since the beginning of the season. So I kind of just dove back into last year’s stuff and just went back to my old mechanics, and it seems like the past start or two my fastball has had a little more life, a little more jump and the separation between all of my pitches, especially today, it’s made my slider a lot better, made my changeup and curveball a lot better because the fastball was getting on them and getting the hop that I needed.”

Is it possible he only was able to do it because the 2023 Cardinals are just a really bad team? Absolutely. But this is still a playoff team from last season with the reigning National League MVP. The Cardinals went into the day scoring the 11th-most runs per game in baseball; their struggles have mostly been due to pitching. The lineup, the same one Megill mostly handled easily on Friday, is still very solid.

With Lucchesi lurking in Triple-A and Quintana working his way back, Megill needed this one in a big way. He will need to show this wasn’t a fluke, but he bought himself at least a few more chances to do so.

If he does show that he’s turned a corner, maybe the Mets can move to a six-man rotation when Quintana is healthy. Senga already needs an extra day of rest, and it won’t hurt the rest of the rotation either given their ages.

That is, if everyone is healthy when Quintana is back, which is a big if.